Grace's Story: A Wind at My Back Novel-Prologue
by Maxfan1
Summary: Opening act for a long novel based on the great Wind at My Back tv series set in a small Ontario town in the 1930's. This begins in 1918 at the end of WWI. It ends in 1927, five years before the start of the series. Read on and learn how Grace Bailey became the person we meet in the first episode.


by W.A. Vaughan

Grace's Story: A Wind at My Back novel

Prologue

From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -

I wasn't supposed to be at my father's funeral. When he died of the Spanish Influenza, I was still very weak after suffering a bout of the same illness. Dr. Gregory said mine was a mild case, but it still had me helpless in bed for several days. He had absolutely forbidden me to attend either the memorial service or the burial.

My mother firmly seconded his decision. No matter how much I cried or pleaded, she wouldn't budge an inch. In fact, she all but threatened to have me chained to my bed. In the end, even I thought that I was going to do as I was told. I endured a well-meaning visit from a neighbor whom Mother had asked to look in on me while everyone else was at the memorial service.

Then, I found myself alone in a house to which the man who called me his little dreamer when he was in an affectionate mood and always forgave me when I got into a scrape would never return. Everywhere I looked treasured moments of his warmth, his kindness, and his steadfastness rushed in to fill my thoughts. I could see myself at ten telling him that I no longer minded that my brothers were going to be the ones to run the family business, the Silverdome Mining Company, instead of me. I was going to go to university and make my mark on the world afterwards as a scientist or maybe a banker.

I assured him that when I ran my own bank he could always come to me for a loan. He wouldn't ever have to rely on those sour old tightwads at the Royal Dominion Bank again. I could hear my mother asking what was wrong with being a respectable lady and marrying a nice gentleman. Nothing I told her but I didn't see why I couldn't be respectable, marry a nice gentleman, and run a bank.

"Because you're a Bailey and not a wild-eyed suffragette," she replied.

"Now May," father gently chided her. "Don't discourage the little girl. Remember you help run a mine."

"And look at who I married instead of a respectable gentleman," she retorted, but with a twinkle in her eye.

Every old memory of my father made me conscious that there would be no new ones. I stood it until I was on the edge of tears. Then I dressed, snatched up my umbrella and my warmest coat, and walked out into the icy drizzle trying to ignore my aching joints and muscles.

I headed towards the cemetery, hoping to get there while everyone else was at the memorial service. When I arrived, I stationed myself under a sturdy oak and looked down at an open grave and a newly carved headstone. I thought of the war still raging in France and wondered fearfully if someone was digging a grave like it for one or the other of my two brothers at the front. If so, that final resting place would be marked not with a headstone, but with a simple white cross.

I whispered a brief but heartfelt prayer to God, the latest of many, to preserve their lives and to bring them safely home. Every now and then the wind blew bone freezing sheets of rain into me in spite of my umbrella which was simply too small to protect much. The oak, having shed many of its autumn leaves, didn't provide much cover either.

By the time the funeral procession made its way through the cemetery half an hour later, I was shivering from the cold and damp. My head was feeling as though a giant hand had just started to squeeze it like a rubber ball and was slowly and painfully increasing the pressure. I used the trunk of the tree to keep out of everyone's sight until the burial service was underway. Then, I trudged over to the funeral party and slipped in beside my mother. She stiffened slightly when she saw me but gave no other sign of her shock and dismay. The Reverend [Donald] Seale raised his voice a little so that he could be heard clearly over the splattering of the raindrops on the wood of the coffin and on the tightly stretched cloth of the mourners' umbrellas.

Mother cried no tears. Her stern Presbyterian self-discipline forbade any such public display. Nonetheless, her face was taut with the effort of repression. I looked into her eyes as the first clods of damp earth struck the lid of the coffin. They were empty of everything except pain. An ache of pity clutched at my heart. The weight of our mutual sorrow was too much for me. I started to cry uncontrollably and for many years afterwards there was a part of me deep inside that never stopped.

As I walked away from the grave, my body was seized with a fit of shivering. Mother and Rev. Seale took hold of me to keep me from falling. I have a vague memory of them helping me to Mother's car as the world blurred into a haze of rain and tears. Then the resurgent fever took me and I fell into a delirium.

For a long while I surfaced only occasionally for brief moments of clarity and coherence. All I remember from that time are disconnected flashes of awareness. The shock of cold as Dr. Gregory gently placed an icepack on my forehead. The fear and desperation in my Mother's expression as she murmured something I couldn't make out from behind folded hands. The Rev. Seale standing gravely beside her.

When I came out of my relapse, I felt completely wrung out in body and spirit. My recovery was painfully slow. The first night I was strong enough to get out of bed, I tried to write in the journal my father had given me the previous Christmas as he had given me one every Christmas since I was twelve. Most of the pages were filled as 1918 was almost over. I wrote a couple of lines about coming down with the Spanish Influenza, but I was not prepared for the wave of grief that overwhelmed me when I tried to write the words that would record my father's death.

Even after the tears stopped coming, I sat motionless at my desk for a long time. My hand held the pen poised above the blank half of the page. I simply could not will it to write. Eventually, I put the journal in the bottom of my bottom right hand desk drawer and left it there. I considered taking it out a couple of times after that, but just the thought of writing in it was enough to bring me near to tears. In the end, it was easier to let it lie there untouched.

Nevertheless, there were comforts and consolations. The war ended in an armistice which was shortly followed by the news that my brothers were alive and unhurt and would be coming home. I knew Bob would be counting the days until he could see his wife, Toppy, and their newborn daughter, Doris. I wasn't looking forward to the inevitable arguments when Mother told happy-go-lucky Jack that it was time he got serious about learning the mining business and maybe finding the right girl with whom to marry and settle down.

During the weeks of my convalescence, I had plenty of time to write and send thank you notes to everyone who had expressed their sympathies for my family's bereavement. What amazed me was how many total strangers wrote to express their regret at my father's passing. I had always been aware that he was a kind man with a good heart. My mother would sometimes remonstrate with him to no avail for being such a soft touch for anyone with a hard luck story.

Even so, I was astonished when letters from people he had helped in their time of misfortune kept arriving for months. A few of them even contained cash and checks by way of repayment. Mother donated this money to the church poor fund. I never heard another word of criticism of father's generosity from her again.

For all these blessings, the loss, not just of my father but of so many of my generation of young people to war and epidemic over the previous four years, haunted me. As I recovered my strength, I found myself writing letter of sympathy after letter of sympathy to the loved ones of classmates I had lost to the Spanish Influenza and to classmates who had lost loved ones of their own. I couldn't help but remember the aftermaths of Passchendaele and 2nd Ypres when it seemed that there would be no end to black crepe and drawn blinds.

As I lay in bed or shuffled weakly about the house in my dressing gown and slippers, cut off from my familiar world of friends and school, all my hopes and ambitions seemed faraway and a little unreal. Even after my health and strength returned, they never quite regained their old vividness.

As 1919 followed 1918, life became more and more difficult. The financial position of the Silverdome Mining Company, already weakened by a chancy investment made by my father, failed to benefit much from the temporary prosperity that followed the war. The slump that began in 1920 would have Mother fighting the banks tooth and nail to keep them from taking control away from the family. Bob was at university resuming his studies to become a mining engineer and Jack was just beginning to learn the business.

Mother had to run the Silverdome Mining Company herself with no one to be a partner to her as she had been to father. She was up to the challenge. However, as she was forced to devote most of her time to the company, responsibility for managing the household fell more and more on my shoulders. Even if my best friend, Sally Brewster, hadn't moved away in the summer of 1919, I would still have found myself with less and less time for her and the rest of my school friends.

After Jack left for Northbridge to make a life with his new wife, an engaging, goodhearted Irish-Canadian girl named Honey Callahan, I was more isolated than ever. That Mother refused to accept Honey into the family because she was a Catholic or allow any contact with my brother only made the situation more miserable.

It was about then that a ray of sunshine in the form of a nice boy named Judd Wainwright came into my life. He had a reputation for being gabby and maybe he was with others, but I always found him to be charmingly shy. We dated for a while, but then drifted apart after he had to leave school when his mother fell ill to take a job as a traveling salesman.

As time went on, I found myself falling more and more under my mother's sway. Between keeping house for her, assisting her in her church and civic activities, and being her all-purpose servant, it was a wonder that I managed to find any time for my schoolwork much less for myself. It seemed that whenever I wanted to do something with a friend or by myself she managed to find some urgent task that needed to be done or some important obligation that she couldn't possibly meet without my help.

The worst of it all was when she refused to let me return to my summer job as receptionist at the mine office. She met my objections by telling me that I didn't know how lucky I was not to have to grasp and scramble in a hard world just to scrape out an existence the way she had to when she was my age. Each day it became just a little easier to go along with whatever my mother wanted and just a little harder to put up a struggle.

A few months before I was to graduate from high school, Mother brought up the subject of my future. As we made sandwiches for her bridge luncheon, she suggested that with things being so hard at the mine and her needing my help so much at home, maybe I should put off going to university until next year. Needless to say, next year never came.

If Mother had been stubborn and domineering and nothing else, maybe I would have run away from New Bedford and taken any job I could find just to be able to call my life my own. Maybe I would have joined Jack and Honey and their children in Northbridge. However, there were evenings when Mother came home so weary after a long, hard day of trying to keep the mine going that I couldn't understand why she didn't drop in her tracks. There were also moments when she let a chink show in the armor of her fortitude and I could see how much she still missed my father. Seeing her carry so much worry and grief on her shoulders was too much for my resolution. I simply couldn't bear the thought of leaving her alone.

After graduation, with no school to attend, I found myself with a fair amount of time on my hands and almost no one to spend it with. My high school friends had moved on to jobs and marriages. Some left New Bedford altogether. As a life of my own became less and less of a possibility with each passing day, I sought diversion. Often I escaped through a square of tinted light projected onto a theater screen into worlds far more romantic and exciting than my own. I even persuaded Bob to lend me his old class notes and textbooks from university to read so that I could have at least that much of my dreams of further education.

Mother, although skeptical of my ability to apply myself to the project, actually approved of that. She felt that any child of hers should keep as informed as possible about mining since it was, after all, the family business. I won't deny that the studying was sometimes murderously hard. I doubt that I got even half out of Bob's books and notes of what he did by actually going to university. Even so, I made myself finish by main force, if only to keep from justifying Mother's opinion that I was "unsuitable for any work more complicated than compiling a grocery list."

I often found balm for such hurtful remarks in a cup of tea and a kind word or two from the Rev. Seale. He was such a dear old gentleman in those days that you would never have known that he wasn't always that way. I could remember when he was stern, unyielding, and prideful in his fidelity to the forms of Christian virtue. It is a terrible thing to say about a man of God, but he could be heedless and uncaring towards those who failed to measure up to his strict standards of conduct and decorum.

I once saw him tell poor, 6-year-old Lew Campbell that his beloved grandfather might well be in hell because of his drinking and poor church attendance. At that time, he was respected by the more sour and judgmental souls of the congregation, feared by most of the rest, and liked by no one.

His way of living and thinking only changed with the spiritual crisis brought on by the loss of his only son at Vimy Ridge. He once told me that he did not believe that God would be so cruel as to kill such a fine, decent boy as his Rob just to teach him to be less harsh and insensitive. However, he admitted that it may have been true that only such a dreadful blow could have broken his heart enough for God's mercy and compassion to enter in.

He had thought himself a good man with a sure and certain knowledge of God's will. He had thought himself secure in God's favor from all misfortune. The first shock of his grief taught him that he knew nothing and less than nothing of God's will or of his favor. He came to realize that one must first partake of a full measure of humility and simplicity before one can be truly good.

To judge by the sincere apologies he made to those he had wronged by his previous haughtiness and the kindliness and forbearance he showed his parishioners afterwards, he had learned that lesson well. There was more than a little confusion among all who knew him when he began to preach a gospel of love instead of a doctrine of fear. I didn't know what to make of it myself when on visits to sick or bereaved neighbors I was told by them of how he had shown genuine concern for their welfare.

I was absolutely shocked to learn that he had abandoned his usual habit of burdening them with threadbare platitudes and a polite blessing. Instead he had actually taken the time to listen to what they had to say. Where advice was called for, disapproving lectures were replaced by thoughtful suggestions.

Sometimes he did more than that. I remember Melody Forbes brushing away tears as she told me how he had reunited her on her sickbed with her former best friend whom she hadn't spoken to in five years because of a foolish quarrel. After a while, even the most stubborn doubters came to accept that his change of heart was sincere.

Any doubts I had were erased by his gentle and patient ministry to me and to my mother in our time of grief. During the years when I was yearning and dreaming my life away in my mother's house, I came to find comfort in his friendship. He always listened to my troubles with an understanding heart.

He urged me to be patient with Mother and not to let my frustrated hunger for a different life keep me from making the most of the one I had. He taught me how little kindnesses given and received can brighten each day and give consolation and even joy in the face of our greatest sorrows and disappointments. He showed me by his own example how the sum of many such days can be a life that can truly be said to have been well lived.

My visits to him were always among the bright spots of my week. I would bring him flowers from my garden or Mother's conservatory. His housekeeper, Mrs. Rutledge, would let me help her with her baking. She made a pretty decent cook out of me before she was through. The Rev. Seale and I would sit for a while as the afternoon light slanted lazily through the window of his parlor. After dealing with religious matters, we would talk of anything under the sun. Occasionally, he would favor me with a memory of the small village in Scotland where he grew up or with an insight into the delight to be found in this or the other commonplace thing.

More often, he would lean back in his chair puffing on his pipe and listening with benevolent indulgence while I chattered on about my enthusiasm of the moment. Usually, the Rev. Seale and I were in perfect sympathy with each other, but not always. I remember one visit during which he did his dutiful best to shed light on the daunting mysteries of predestination. I explained, between blushes and nervous hiccoughs, the romantic appeal of Rudolph Valentino. I think I baffled him more than he did me. In the end we reached a mutual understanding. I agreed to be more diligent in my Bible study and he agreed to be more tolerant of the younger generation's eccentricities.

Mother approved of our friendship as she did of anything that encouraged me to be more active in the church. I think she found the Rev. Seale a comfort herself for all her occasional grumbling that he could stand to be a little more sound on doctrine. She resented it when he urged her to relent in her antagonism towards my brother Jack and his wife, if only for the sake of the grandchildren. However, I think she also respected him for standing up to her.

I can still see him telling her that he would give anything to be able to speak to his son for just one more time. I will never forget the depth of sorrow in his eyes when he told her that we never know when it will be too late. Mother called him a foolish busybody. However, for the rest of that evening, I caught her staring again and again at Jack in the photograph on the parlor wall of him and Bob and myself taken at the Wales Photography Studio in a formal sitting when we were children. Mother raised no objection when I went to visit the Rev. Seale the next afternoon.

When he died of a heart attack in 1927, it was almost as though I had lost my father a second time. I could see nothing ahead of me except the long, bleak years of a friendless and unfulfilled life. To her credit, Mother was genuinely regretful when she broke the news to me. When I cried at the funeral, she didn't scold me for being undignified.

A few days later, she even unbent enough from her habitual suspicion of popular entertainment to offer to go with me to the latest John Barrymore film, Beloved Rogue. I just wish she hadn't embarrassed me by stalking out of the theater during the scene when Barrymore appeared shirtless and dragging me with her. I would still love to see the last part of that film. I always did have a soft spot for stories of charming rascals who reform for the sake of love.

As it turned out, I hadn't yet heard the last of the Rev. Seale. I couldn't have been more surprised when I was informed by his attorney that he had left a letter to be given to me in the event of his death.

Rev. Donald Arthur Seale to Grace Bailey, September 20, 1926

If you are reading this, then I am now in a position to know the answers to all the difficult questions of life and eternity that we have grappled with over tea and biscuits during so many afternoons of Bible study. I hope that you will continue to wrestle with them even when I am gone. You have a quick and agile mind and you shouldn't neglect it. Don't allow yourself to be discouraged by your mother's underestimation of you.

I hope that you will keep your gentle and compassionate nature in spite of all. It is the most beautiful part of you and the part of you that I have treasured above all others. When my son died and my daughter repaid my neglect of her during childhood by walking out of my life when she became an adult, I thought that I would spend the rest of my life alone. I could not understand why God would have it so. Then in his mercy he sent us each other. As I had lost my children, you had lost your father. In trying to soothe your grief, I found healing for my own.

I have loved you as a daughter and will for as long as life of the body or of the soul endures. No father could have asked for a kinder, sweeter, more goodhearted girl to be the apple of his eye. You have brightened my days and lightened the cares of my old age. I wish that I could shield you from all trial and sorrow and see to it that the rest of your life is filled with nothing but joy and happiness. Unfortunately, no human being has that power.

Instead, I would like to leave you with a gift, one that I hope may give you some solace in difficult times. Together, we have spent many happy and fruitful hours discussing what it means to lead a truly Christian life. I have devoted sermons and articles amounting to thousands of words to my thoughts on this subject. However, I believe that I can put the matter far more simply. We must be good to one another in this brief life and trust that God will be good to us afterwards. This is all the wisdom that I know. Live by this principle and however harsh and unfair life may sometimes be, it can never be in vain.

From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -

I still have that letter. I keep it in a frame above my writing desk. Every so often, I glance up at it. My eyes always fall on the same words, "We must be good to one another in this brief life and trust that God will be good to us afterwards." It is a simple, but not an easy wisdom. I have often found it hard to live by and harder still to answer the questions that it raises. However, I have never found it less than worthwhile to try. As I sat in the parlor, holding the Rev. Seale's letter in my hands, I promised myself that in his memory I would try.

Next: The Summer of '36


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